Sun Yat-sen University

About: Sun Yat-sen University is a education organization based out in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Cancer. The organization has 115149 authors who have published 113763 publications receiving 2286465 citations. The organization is also known as: Zhongshan University & SYSU.

LiCl/PVA Gel Electrolyte Stabilizes Vanadium Oxide Nanowire Electrodes for Pseudocapacitors

Abstract: Here we report a new strategy to improve the electrochemical stability of vanadium oxide electrodes for pseudocapacitors. Vanadium oxides are known to suffer from severe capacitance loss during charging/discharging cycling, due to chemical dissolution and ion intercalation/deintercalation-induced material pulverization. We demonstrate that these two issues can be addressed by using a neutral pH LiCl/PVA gel electrolyte. The function of the gel electrolyte is twofold: (i) it reduces the chemical dissolution of amphoteric vanadium oxides by minimizing water content and providing a neutral pH medium and (ii) it serves as a matrix to maintain the vanadium oxide nanowire network structure. Vanadium oxide nanowire pseudocapacitors with gel electrolyte exhibit excellent capacitance retention rates of more than 85% after cycling for 5000 cycles, without sacrificing the electrochemical performance of vanadium oxides.

Contemporary environmental variation determines microbial diversity patterns in acid mine drainage

Abstract: A wide array of microorganisms survive and thrive in extreme environments. However, we know little about the patterns of, and controls over, their large-scale ecological distribution. To this end, we have applied a bar-coded 16S rRNA pyrosequencing technology to explore the phylogenetic differentiation among 59 microbial communities from physically and geochemically diverse acid mine drainage (AMD) sites across Southeast China, revealing for the first time environmental variation as the major factor explaining community differences in these harsh environments. Our data showed that overall microbial diversity estimates, including phylogenetic diversity, phylotype richness and pairwise UniFrac distance, were largely correlated with pH conditions. Furthermore, multivariate regression tree analysis also identified solution pH as a strong predictor of relative lineage abundance. Betaproteobacteria, mostly affiliated with the ‘Ferrovum’ genus, were explicitly predominant in assemblages under moderate pH conditions, whereas Alphaproteobacteria, Euryarchaeota, Gammaproteobacteria and Nitrospira exhibited a strong adaptation to more acidic environments. Strikingly, such pH-dependent patterns could also be observed in a subsequent comprehensive analysis of the environmental distribution of acidophilic microorganisms based on 16S rRNA gene sequences previously retrieved from globally distributed AMD and associated environments, regardless of the long-distance isolation and the distinct substrate types. Collectively, our results suggest that microbial diversity patterns are better predicted by contemporary environmental variation rather than geographical distance in extreme AMD systems.

Boosting the Energy Density of Carbon-Based Aqueous Supercapacitors by Optimizing the Surface Charge

Abstract: The voltage of carbon-based aqueous supercapacitors is limited by the water splitting reaction occurring in one electrode, generally resulting in the promising but unused potential range of the other electrode. Exploiting this unused potential range provides the possibility for further boosting their energy density. An efficient surface charge control strategy was developed to remarkably enhance the energy density of multiscale porous carbon (MSPC) based aqueous symmetric supercapacitors (SSCs) by controllably tuning the operating potential range of MSPC electrodes. The operating voltage of the SSCs with neutral electrolyte was significantly expanded from 1.4 V to 1.8 V after simple adjustment, enabling the energy density of the optimized SSCs reached twice as much as the original. Such a facile strategy was also demonstrated for the aqueous SSCs with acidic and alkaline electrolytes, and is believed to bring insight in the design of aqueous supercapacitors.

Photo-PISA: Shedding Light on Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly

Abstract: Herein we report an aqueous photoinitiated polymerization-induced self-assembly (photo-PISA) for the preparation of a remarkably diverse set of complex polymer nanoparticle morphologies (e.g., spheres, worms, and vesicles) at room temperature. Ultrafast polymerization rates were achieved, with near quantitative monomer conversion within 15 min of visible light irradiation. An important feature of the photo-PISA is that diblock copolymer vesicles can be prepared under mild conditions (room temperature, aqueous medium, visible light), which will be important for the preparation of functional vesicles loaded with biorelated species (e.g., proteins). As a proof of concept, silica nanoparticles and bovine serum albumin (BSA) were encapsulated in situ within vesicles via the photo-PISA process.

Studies on the synthesis and antibacterial activities of polymeric quaternary ammonium salts from dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate

Abstract: Four quaternary ammonium salt monomers were synthesized from dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) by quaternization with benzyl chloride (BC), butyl bromide (BB), dodecyl bromide (DB) or hexadecyl bromide (HB), respectively. And then, the monomers were homopolymerized to obtain four polymeric quaternary ammonium materials with different lengths of alkyl chain, which were referred to as poly(DMAEMA-BC), poly(DMAEMA-BB), poly(DMAEMA-DB) and poly(DMAEMA-HB), respectively. The resultant monomers and related polymers were characterized by elemental analysis, FTIR, NMR, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and so on. Their bactericidal activities were evaluated by determining minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) values and inhibitory zone diameters against Gram-positive bacteria ( S. aureus ) and Gram-negative bacteria ( E. coli ), respectively. The results showed that the MBC values of monomer DMAEMA-DB and DMAEMA-HB were 12–24 μg/mL against E. coli and S. aureus . However, the MBC values of monomer DMAEMA-BC and DMAEMA-BB were higher than 50 mg/mL against test microbe. It was very interesting that poly(DMAEMA-BC) and poly(DMAEMA-BB) exhibited greater bactericidal activities than their precursory monomers, but poly(DMAEMA-DB) and poly(DMAEMA-HB) present contrary results.